lapsus linguae

Catalogue Essay for Ingrid Bachmann, Pelt (Bestiary)

Earlier this year I wrote a wee catalogue essay on Montreal-based installation artist Ingrid Bachmann‘s work Pelt (Bestiary), which opened on April 13, 2012 at the Galerie Materia in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. It was the opening show of the Quebec Art Biennale – “Manifestation internationale d’art de Québec” – Manif d’art 6, curated by Nicole Gingras, which officially opened May 3, 2012.

Copies of this gem of a catalogue arrived by post this morning. Here are the opening lines from my text:

I have seen Ingrid Bachmann stick electrodes into potatoes to see what sounds they make, and then stick them into into apples to compare notes.

The harmonic frequencies of fruits and vegetables, the private lives of hermit crabs, the stories we tell, the lies, the sublime secrets suitcases hold, the music used shoes make… Such is the breadth of her curiosity. Electric is her line of inquiry. Direct is her approach.

Much of Bachmann’s work with technology has been aimed at demystifying it, humanizing it, stripping it down to its essentials, and then hanging stories on those bare bones. She has used bits of yarn to map the internet’s under-sea cables, harnessed the computer loom to “print” seismic activity, offered giant knitting needles as a user-computer interface.

It is through this material sensibility that we must approach this new work.

And here is video documentation of Pelt (Bestiary).

Further Adventures of Pookie & JR Appear on the Electronic Literature Authoring Software Website

Pookie is a a biological, digital, quasi-fictional manifestation of Montreal artist Ingrid Bachmann’s imagination. And, for a hermit crab, Pookie sure gets around. Bachmann and Pookie collaborated on The Digital Crustaceans project at StudioXX, Montréal, Québec in 2002. That project lives online here: http://www.digitalhermit.ca/. Bachmann and Pookie collaborated again on Digital Crustaceans v.0.2: Homesteading on the Web at Gallery Articule, Main Gallery, Montréal, Québec, April 4 – May 4 2003.

Pookie and I hung out quite a lot the summer of 2009 and a number of projects emerged as a result. We were in a show together at Arnolfini in Bristol in May, 2010, and have a book coming out any moment now from TRAUMAWIEN.

Our latest adventure – an entry on the Excerpts from the Chronicles of Pookie & JR has just been added to the Electronic Literature Authoring Software Website edited by Judy Malloy.

Pookie Goes to the Beach, Ingrid Bachmann

[screenshot from The Digital Crustaceans project, Ingrid Bachmann, 2002]

The Electronic Literature Authoring Software Website is resource for teachers and students of new media writing, who are exploring what authoring tools to use, for new media writers and poets, who are interested in how their colleagues approach their work, and for readers, who want to understand how new media writers and poets create their work, the Authoring Software project is an ongoing collection of statements about authoring tools and software. It also looks at the relationship between interface and content in new media writing and at how the innovative use of authoring tools and the creation of new authoring tools have expanded digital writing/hypertext writing/net narrative practice in this vibrant contemporary creative writing field.

Begun in conjunction with the 2008 Electronic Literature Organization Conference, this resource was also a part of the Computers and
Writing 2009 Online Sessions hosted by UC Davis.

Visit Excerpts from the Chronicles of Pookie & JR on the Electronic Literature Authoring Software Website.

Excerpts from the Chronicles of Pookie & JR

Last week I was hanging out with Nick Montfort in Montreal. He’s been working on a series of 1k story generators written in Python. I’ve never paid any attention to Python before, because it doesn’t output to the web. To download and run Nick’s 1k story generators in a terminal window, visit: http://grandtextauto.org/2008/11/30/three-1k-story-generators/

This week I’m hanging out with Ingrid Bachmann’s hermit crab Pookie. Pookie is a biological, digital, quasi-fictional manifestation of Ingrid Bachmann’s imagination. Pookie already has a website: www.digitalhermit.ca. And I’ve already written about past collaborations between Bachmann and Pookie: Digital Crustaceans v.0.2: Homesteading on the Web. But I’ve never spent any time alone with a hermit crab before. I started chronicling my adventures with Pookie as sentences written on a blackboard, and then started feeding those sentences into one of Nick’s story generators written Python. The generator uses a sequence of (specially written) sentences; all but 5-9 sentences are removed and the remaining text is presented as the story.

To read Excerpts from the Chronicles of Pookie & JR, download this file to your desktop and unzip: PookieAndJR.py On a Mac or Linux system, you can run the story generator by opening a terminal Window, typing “cd Desktop”, and typing “python story2.py”. The generator runs on Windows, too, but you will probably need to install Python first: version 2.6. Once Python is installed you can double click on the file and it will automatically launch and run in the terminal window. Every time you press Return a new version of the story will appear. Here are a few examples:

Excerpts from the Chronicles of Pookie & JR:
Previously, Pookie and JR had only ever met at parties.
Pookie hides in his cup when JR is in her cups.
JR is patient; Pookie has to crawl before he can walk.
Pookie is actually pretty social, for a hermit crab.
Every three days or so, JR waters the ferns.
Live and let live, Pookie’s nonchalant attitude seems to suggest.
When Pookie digs in the night, he makes quite a racket.
Late one night, Pookie and JR listen to a chained dog’s howls.
JR hasn’t been sleeping much lately.
To be continued…

Excerpts from the Chronicles of Pookie & JR:
JR has a friend over for drinks and forgets to introduce Pookie.
Pookie only plays in his water dish when he has an audience.
JR changes Pookie’s water. Pookie makes a mess of his feeding dish.
Pookie has turned JR off of shellfish for life.
The cafe across the street is only noisy until eleven or so.
Do you hear that? JR asks Pookie.
JR hasn’t been sleeping much lately.
JR is in hiding.
To be continued…

Excerpts from the Chronicles of Pookie & JR:
Pookie slowly comes out of his shell, so to speak.
Pookie has many shells to choose from.
JR changes Pookie’s water. Pookie makes a mess of his feeding dish.
JR crumbles Pookie’s hermit crab food pellets into bite-sized bits.
When Pookie digs in the night, he makes quite a racket.
Pookie keeps his thoughts to himself.
To be continued…
. . . . .